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Online Piracy: The New 'War on Drugs' | /var/blog
Recently, I was asked to lead a discussion for a Columbia student group about internet 'piracy'. The topic isn't synonymous with SOPA/PIPA/ACTA, but those bills obviously came up. Glenn Greenwald does an excellent job explaining why, even if SOPA is dead, we may still be losing the war. This is what I have to add about all of those bills. No law will ever stop online filesharing (in the long run). Copyright, copyleft, public domain, whatever - it doesn't matter. Technology moves too fast, and government moves too slowly. We've seen it time and again - they shut down Napster, then Kazaa popped up. Kazaa came under fire, then torrenting became popular. Now the trend is towards magnet links, which are even easier to share, and even harder to censor. Temporary setbacks aside, if you really want to keep getting digital media for free, I'd bet almost anything you'll still be able to in ten, fifteen, twenty years. (If we haven't yet moved beyond